Luang Por Panyananda Bhikkhu

Panyananda Bhikkhu was born Pun Sanaecharoen on 11 May 1911 in Phatthalung province, southern Thailand. He was ordained as a novice at Wat Upanantaram in Ranong in 1929 and as a monk at Wat Nang Lat in Phatthalung in 1931, taking the name Paññananda. He studied Pali at Wat Sam Phraya in Bangkok. In 1937 he spent the Rains retreat at Suan Mokkh, where he studied and practised with Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. The Kasetsart University biography calls the two, with a third monk, close friends in the Dhamma who worked together to spread Buddhism from then on.

In 1949 he moved to Chiang Mai. The Kasetsart University biography says he preached there on Sundays and Buddhist observance days from a leaf-roofed hall and from a car with a loudspeaker, and wrote for northern newspapers. In 1957 he became chair of the Buddhist foundation at Wat Umong. In 1954 he travelled to Switzerland for a Moral Re-Armament conference.

In 1960 he was invited to Wat Chonprathan Rangsarit, a new temple in Pak Kret, Nonthaburi, built for the Royal Irrigation Department. He was appointed abbot at the opening ceremony on 20 May 1960 and stayed there for the rest of his life. He began Sunday Dhamma talks at the temple, which the temple says were the first of their kind in Thailand, and set out to reform temple ceremonies so that they would be orderly, simple, economical and useful. Monthly ordination of new monks at the temple began in 1981. From 1978 he gave a Dhamma talk on national radio on the first Sunday of each month.

In 1994 he chaired the building of a second temple, Wat Panyanandaram, in Khlong Luang, Pathum Thani. He died in Bangkok on 10 October 2007, aged 96.

The temple’s website and the Kasetsart University Library’s online collection of his books are both in Thai.